Vacuum material handlers are pieces of equipment which can be mounted on the boom of an excavator, overhead crane or other equipment to move large and heavy objects. They are most commonly found in pipeline construction and certain manufacturing facilities where they are used to move large diameter pipe or flat stock steel. The vacuum material handlers available on the market today typically have a frame with a hydraulically powered rotator which can be coupled to the boom of an excavator. The high pressure hydraulic fluid from the excavator is used to operate the rotator and rotate the material being moved.
The frame carries an internal combustion engine upon which can be either gasoline or diesel powered. This engine drives a vacuum pump. The vacuum pump is in fluid communication with a vacuum reservoir. The vacuum reservoir is in fluid communication with a large suction cup structure located beneath the frame typically called the pad. The pad is slightly contoured to be complimentary to the surface of the object being moved such that the pad would be slightly concaved to compliment the curve of the pipe being moved. Likewise the pad could be relatively flat to match up to the surface of plate metal being moved.
The prior art vacuum material handlers have been somewhat limited in applications to being used only on the equipment having a supply of hydraulic fluid. They are also not readily moved from one piece of equipment to another with the material held in place, i.e. it has not heretofore not been possible to pick up a pipe with the material handler on a excavator and then transfer the material handler with the pipe still attached to a second piece of equipment such as a forklift or overhead crane.
These limitation arises for two primary reasons. First the prior art material handler requires the high pressure hydraulic fluid from the excavator in order to rotate. Second there is not an apparatus by which the material handler can be moved from a first piece of equipment to a second piece of equipment while maintaining hold on the pipe or other material.